


Lionheart

by missmungoe



Category: One Piece
Genre: F/M, Family, Fatherhood, Shanks-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 22:19:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14090919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmungoe/pseuds/missmungoe
Summary: It's a lesser known fact that Red-Haired Shanks got his hair colour from his mother.





	Lionheart

**Author's Note:**

> Oda associates Shanks with a lion, which I find to be both beautifully appropriate thematic-wise, and an aesthetically pleasing image.

Out of all his memories of his childhood, his mother was the clearest, seeming a fixed point in his mind, curiously enduring. Other impressions weren’t as unforgettable, shifting like the push and pull of the tide, sometimes at the very front of his mind, sometimes just out of reach. But where everything else faded, scents and sounds and images worn thin by the sea of years, Shanks remembered her vividly—the red, untamed mane of her hair and the roar of her laughter.

He’d left home early, not even thirteen, although with his mother buried there hadn’t been much of a home left to keep him land-bound. And the world had taught him quickly that there was little room for children on the high seas, but he’d always found his footing easily, quick to adjust to change, and when he’d first found his sea legs he’d felt there was nothing in the world that could tip him off balance. He’d been made for this—had been born to it, conceived and shaped with the sea’s blessing, his mother’s feet steady as her stomach grew big with him, every month making her work more difficult, but she'd bit her teeth and had carried him through her duties, aboard the ship that had seen him come into the world.

 _You were born belowdecks_ , _in the throes of the worst storm I can remember_ , she’d used to tell him, whenever he’d ask. And he’d known the story by heart, but she’d always tell it as though it was the first time; Shanks remembered how she’d pitch her voice low, and how she’d pause at certain places to build the suspense. And he remembered how her eyes would soften, a tender sadness in the weight of them that it had taken years to understand.

_You were rocked to sleep by the sea, the first year of your life. I don’t think it ever left you, even after I brought you ashore._

She’d been a sailor, second mate to the captain of a trading vessel—his father, although Shanks had few memories of him, beyond the vague impression of floorboards creaking under old leather boots, and the things she’d kept of him; books, the only gifts he’d ever brought her, and their giving the only times he’d seen his mother smile at his old man.

She’d never told him why she’d left service, but he could wager a guess. The captain’s son or not, having him on board would have been deemed more trouble than he was worth. A different captain might not have minded, and there were children born and raised on ships who took their first steps with the sea underfoot and who never left it, but his mother had retired a year after he’d been born. Shanks doubted it had been an entirely voluntary dismissal, but he could imagine the alternative well enough.

His father had visited—until one day, when he’d stopped. He remembered a ship leaving port, and his mother’s hand gripping his, her anger tempered by nothing but sheer force of will, for his sake. He’d never returned, and for as long as she’d lived, she’d never forgiven him for it; as little as Shanks had understood of their marriage, he’d known that much. She’d never been the same, as though his leaving had uprooted something in her that she’d never reclaimed.

It had been a betrayal, he saw now. The things his father had denied her—her post, her crew, the sea—he’d chosen for himself. And she’d  _missed_ the sea. Like her hair, like her loud, unapologetic laugh, he remembered that—the longing for the horizon in her eyes, like a sickness of the heart. But if even his father wouldn’t have her on board, who would hire a woman with a young child in tow?

He remembered the  _wrongness_  of her, encased within the cramped walls of their cottage. It had always seemed too small for her, for how she’d been, everything about her too loud,  _too big_ , with wild roots that had never taken to the soil of their home. Nestled between the rocks on the outermost edge of the shore, it had forever been at the mercy of the sea’s changing temper, but she’d refused to settle further inland, even as the cottage had more than once threatened to come apart around them.

It reminded her of a pitching deck, she’d say, when the floorboards would sing from the storm and the sea tossing against the walls, the wind howling through the rafters, brine on its breath. Those were the memories he treasured most, when she’d dance across the slippery floor, the water dripping from the ceiling to douse the fire of her hair. And she’d be laughing, the sound louder than the storm and carrying an old shanty to accompany the whining protest of the timbers as she secured the hatch and the windows, telling of all hands on deck, and safe harbours beyond the gale. She’d never had a voice for singing, but that had never once stopped her.

His mother had been fearless—or at least she’d seemed that way to Shanks, although even through the lens of hindsight and experience, his impression of her hadn’t changed; the woman who’d lived in the breach where the sea met the shore, and who’d had the courage to always put herself last without a second’s hesitation.

Growing up, he’d often wondered why she hadn’t just left. His father had made that choice without trouble; the sea over his family, as it often was with sailors. An inevitable fate.

But his mother had been a sailor, too, and there was no excuse, Shanks knew now. You always had a choice. His father’s had just been the easiest; the coward’s way out.

He’d asked her once, why she hadn’t gone back to sea—why she hadn’t just left him like his father had, to be free to join a crew, or to make her own. He’d asked why she hadn’t chosen freedom, and she’d _laughed._

 _You say that like it wasn’t what I did_ , she’d said, reaching out to brush his hair away from his face; red like hers, but nowhere near as wild. He wondered now, his own son grown and his spitting image, how much of his father had lingered with him, and if she’d found it hard looking at him sometimes.

But whatever her feelings towards his old man, whatever resentment had remained in his wake, she’d never let him feel so much as a shred of it. It was his sharpest memory—the way her hand had lingered by his cheek, the grooves and callouses in her palm left by ship’s rope and a sailor’s life, worn smooth but never forgotten, as she’d told him, simply but truthfully,

_Freedom is to choose happiness, little lion._

_And I chose you._

“Dad?”

Blinking, the old cottage with its uneven, singing floorboards and slanted roof disappeared, replaced with sturdy hardwood floors, with tables and chairs and shelves stacked with bottles and jars, brown and amber liquor and preserved fruits like gemstones in glass. A pirate’s trove of little, homely treasures, the most valuable of which was watching him curiously, a serving tray cradled to her chest.

“Sorry,” Shanks said, reaching for a smile. “I got lost in thought. Did I miss an order?”

The gentle amusement in the slight purse of her mouth was familiar, and, “Mom handled it,” she told him, with a glance across the room to where Makino weaved between the tables; a captain on deck, even without water underfoot.

His youngest looked back at him, delicate brows lifting with a question. “What were you thinking about?”

Shanks felt his smile soften. The noise from the bar pushed against the edge of his hearing, but there was no storm here, no wind howling through the rafters, and his mother had stopped singing half a lifetime ago.

“What it was like to be your age,” he said at length—and with an exaggerated sigh, “I know—I was young once, believe it or not.”

She curled her fingers around the tray, considering him, before remarking gently, “You were a pirate when you were my age.”

He grinned. Like her amusement, that intrigue was familiar, and like her mother, she was terrible at hiding it. “Aye,” he mused, reaching out to poke the tip of her nose, and the pale freckles dotting the delicate bridge. “Clearly, you make better choices. Safer ones, anyhow. A good thing, because I doubt my heart could take you running off to sea—your sister has been making plans since she could walk. I’d bet my remaining arm she’s already got her bags packed.” He shook his head. “You’d think the promise of a violent amputation would discourage her, if only just a little bit. What did I even lose an arm for, if not to be a living, terrifying example to keep my children away from sea kings?”

Her eyes curved at that, and she didn’t contradict his statement. Then again, her sister had never made a secret of her sea-longing, although Shanks would have recognised it even if she hadn’t been so cheerfully vocal about it. His mother had looked the same, her eyes seas away even as her heart had been anchored.

He caught the slight shift of her expression, her smile slipping, and, “Would you go out to sea again if you could?” came the query, calmly spoken despite the slight note of uncertainty in her voice (and she didn’t ask  _do you miss it?,_ perhaps because the answer was already implied, or perhaps because she understood that it didn’t answer what she really wanted to know, which was  _would you ever leave us for it?_ ).

But then she was that—calm, and unshakable, the latter trait easily attributed to her mother, but Shanks had always wondered if she hadn’t gotten a little of that from him, too. Once he’d made a choice, he never wavered. And everything she represented—the island, the bar, her mother and her siblings—it all amounted to the most important choice in his life.

Across the room, a laugh rose up from the crowd. Her sister’s, the loudest he’d ever heard. Shanks caught her eye, saw the toothy flash of her smile and her dark hair, sea-shells in the thick braid that leapt like a cat’s tail wherever she turned her head. And it was strange, watching the things you’d imparted of yourself take root and grow, hair and laughter and sea-longing, even as he didn’t feel his own anymore, the memory faded and thin, like the impression of old leather boots, and his father’s ship leaving port for the last time. Other, brighter images had taken their place—the red of his youngest’s hair, and her sister’s laughter. His son’s well-thumbed books, and ink-stained fingertips. The happiest he’d ever been, holding each of them for the very first time.

He understood now why his mother had laughed when he’d asked why she didn’t just leave him, if she missed the sea.

“No, my girl,” he said, bending to kiss the crown of her head, her short hair, red like his, although there was little of the sea in their youngest; their steady-footed girl, her lion's heart moored to the island she’d been born. There was courage in that heart, Shanks knew; different from her sister’s boldness, but no less certain. She’d never waver in her choices, once made; was brave enough to make them, whatever they'd be.

And she had the freedom to make them, whatever they’d be. If there was any legacy he’d happily lay claim to, it was ensuring his children were free to chart their own course; that they were free to decide where they wanted their lives to take them. And freedom for him wasn’t the open sea, and had never been that in truth. It was choosing to leave it, and to be allowed that choice, and all that came with it.

“I’ve got all I need right here.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have a feeling this isn't going to be the last I write about Shanks' mother.


End file.
